


don't let me down

by SamIAm



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Background Relationships, Biphobia, Cheating, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Reverse Chronology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7421974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamIAm/pseuds/SamIAm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy passes John at Eliza’s wedding reception, drinking like he means to drown. “Never get married,” he says again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't let me down

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Platonic John and Peggy, The Chainsmokers' "Don't Let Me Down."

Peggy elopes with Stephen Rensselaer at age twenty-four.

…

No one thinks to send her a letter informing her Colonel Laurens has died. She learns secondhand, listening to Eliza fret about Alexander and his dive into his work.

Peggy wonders about Mrs. Laurens, about whether she’s heard yet–-it takes so long for news to get across the ocean. She wonders if she should send a letter expressing her condolences, maybe sharing a fond remembrance.

She’s sure that Alexander won’t have.

…

Peggy passes John at Eliza’s wedding reception, drinking like he means to drown. “Never get married,” he says again.

She’s got enough to worry about tonight without trying to console John Laurens for his irreparably broken heart, but she tells the servants not to give him any more wine. It’s not long after getting cut off that he grabs Mr. Mulligan and that awful Marquis, and they all pull Alexander out to a pub. 

Peggy doesn’t even try to fight it. This is John’s last moment of denial, she’ll let him have it. Anyway, she’s going to be holding Angelica’s hair back any time now.

…

Papa approves the engagement.

Next time John sees Peggy, he tells her Alexander has stopped coming back to him.

…

They start coming by regularly, Alexander to see Eliza and to match Angelica in pointed cordiality, John to torture himself with the lovebirds’ delight in each other and to match Peggy’s disgusted looks over everyone else’s heads.

_‘Don’t ever marry.’_

_‘I know. I won’t.’_

As their acquaintance lengthens a pattern emerges: John will tell her nothing, except about Alexander. Alexander will tell her anything, except about John.

…

Even drunk Mr. Laurens leads well, holds her just close enough. They share a cotillion then stay on the floor for the country dance that follows so everyone will see them. He drops her hand as soon as their turn as lead couple is over and heads out into the cold without her.

…

It turns out that he’s already married.

“It’s terrible,” he says, still giddy and hiccupping from the laughter. “Don’t ever do it.”

“Did you tell him?” she asks, and points across the ballroom to where Colonel Hamilton is kissing Eliza’s hand, wrist, forearm. Eliza always falls fast, but she’s never allowed _that._

Mr. Laurens hiccups particularly loudly, apologizes, finally follows her finger, and scowls. “What’s the point? He’s flighty. I stepped away from him for half a minute when we arrived and when I got back he was already halfway into your other sister’s skirts.“

Peggy searches and spots Angelica dancing with General Washington. Angelica is visibly uninterested in one of her heroes. She keeps glancing over at Eliza and Colonel Hamilton and wincing. “Yikes.”

“He says he’s going to find himself a wife at one of these balls, but he always comes back to me in the morning. You, me, and him. None of us were meant for marriage.”

Peggy looks back at how at Eliza looks at Colonel Hamilton, at how he doesn’t look away from her, and thinks that it probably doesn’t matter. 

Suddenly she realizes Mr. Laurens’ hiccups have gone-–saddened out of him, just like the laughter. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.” She stands.

He stays seated. “What I should get is a woman to dance with.”

…

They’re sitting, not dancing, talking mostly in mockery of their predilections. Every so often Mr. Laurens rises to fetch more drinks. After her second glass of wine he’d switched her to water, but he lets her steal sips from his.

“You’re so good to me,” she says after downing the last third of his fifth glass. “No man will ever be this good for me. I’m twenty-one. We should get married before I’m an old crone.”

Mr. Laurens laughs so hard that he forgets how to sit up straight.

…

Peggy’s staring at that girl in that dress again when an officer appears in front of her face.

“John Laurens,” he says, bowing. He doesn’t reach for her hand.

“Margarita Schuyler,” she says, and offers it.

“May I have this dance?” he says, but he’s still ignoring her hand.

“Do you want it?”

A smile splits his face in half in a bad way, deadened eyes separated completely from a perfectly passable grin. “Not at all.“

 _I hate men._ “So why are you here?”

“Someone has to block your view of the lovely Miss Lott.”

His expression is still horrible–-a lie of a smile and nothing, neither shrewdness nor questioning, in his too flat eyes. He just knows, without needing to confirm it with her. He _knows,_ and fear chills her to the core. She can’t stop her own eyes and mouth from widening in horror. He _knows_.

But his lips twist into a rueful half-smirk and the cold around his eyes thaws until his face is back in honest agreement with itself. “Much as I need someone to stand between me and the lovely Colonel Hamilton. I thought we might come to each other’s aid.”

He finally holds out his hand and she takes it. There is no sudden spark, as Angelica and Eliza have described. There never is.

She glances back at Miss Lott and something in her stomach jumps. Not with men, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr, revised for posting to AO3.
> 
> Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton notes that he engaged in a flirtation with one Cornelia Lott in winter of '79-'80.


End file.
